Open call Seeding Other Instruments Residency
The MTG invites five artists to work alongside music technology researchers in Barcelona, February to July 2027.
- Places
- 5 artists or collectives
- Where
- Barcelona
- Fee
- €1,000 per project
- Period
- February to July 2027
- Deadline
- 30 November 2026
The residency
The Music Technology Group (MTG) at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona invites five artists or collectives to a residency from February to July 2027, alongside five music technology researchers. Each resident works towards an artistic outcome of their own: a performance, a composition, an installation or another work, presented in public at the end of the residency. The residency is organised in collaboration with Phonos, with the support of the Ajuntament de Barcelona.
Collaborations between artists and researchers often settle into one of two arrangements. In one, researchers design a tool and artists come in later to try it out or show what it can do. In the other, the artist brings a project and the researcher builds what it needs. In each, one side's questions set the direction and the other side's skills serve them. In this residency we want to try a third arrangement, where artists and researchers each bring their own questions and ways of working, and the collaboration can change what each of them thinks the work is about. You and the researchers may not always see things the same way, and a project can start from those differences without having to settle them.
In practice, you'll shape your project together with the researchers from the start. We won't fix in advance who works with whom. That can follow the projects as they develop. We approach this as co-design: nobody arrives with the answer, and what you make comes out of the exchange between your practice and their research.
Alongside the artistic work, the residency is a research experiment. We want to understand how a project takes shape when it doesn't belong to either side at the start, and what artists and researchers each take back into their own work afterwards. To follow this, we'll interview you at several points and record some of the sessions (see Taking part in the research). We'll also organise activities that loosen the usual roles, so that it becomes less clear who is the artist and who is the engineer. Things will be uncertain at times. We hope conditions like these can lead to results none of us would have planned, and the process interests us as much as the results. We'll be open with you about every part of it.
The hosts
The Music Technology Group (MTG) is a research group in the Department of Engineering at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, working on the analysis, understanding and generation of sound and music. Its team of researchers, engineers and artists brings together signal processing, machine learning, music perception, computational musicology and human-computer interaction, often in collaboration with musicians, educators and industry.
Phonos is a pioneering centre for electronic and electroacoustic music in Spain, with 50 years of history, associated with UPF since 1994. It builds bridges between sound creation and research in technology through artist residencies, workshops, concerts and public events, many of them in close collaboration with MTG.
Both are based at the UPF Poblenou campus in Barcelona, where the workshops and the final presentation take place.
What we're interested in
We're interested in how technology shapes the way sound and music are made, heard, described and shared. Much of this is changing right now because of AI, and we're especially curious about what these technologies make possible, what they leave out, and what they change for the people who make and listen to music. At MTG, we build tools with these technologies and experiment with them ourselves.
That said, your project doesn't have to involve AI. It can work with any technology, or start from your practice and see where that leads. Whatever technologies it involves, you can build with them, misuse them, question them or refuse them, and all of these approaches are equally welcome.
What it involves
What we offer
- A fee of €1,000 per project (see Fee and conditions).
- Five researchers working with the residents throughout, on projects defined together early on.
- Access to the production and recording studios at Phonos.
- Access to Sala Aranyó and its 16-speaker ambisonic setup for spatial sound.
- Access to the wider research community at MTG, including the option to join research lab meetings.
- A place at the MusAI workshop at MTG, 15–18 March 2027, on critical, interdisciplinary perspectives on AI and music.
- Exchange with the other residents during the collective workshops.
- Documentation of your results and of the public presentation, shared with you.
- Public presentation of your work at the final event.
We hope to offer further opportunities over the course of the residency and will share them as they come up.
The programme
The residency is built around two collective workshops, two online talks and a public presentation. Between the in-person meetings, you work with the researchers at a pace you agree on.
What we ask
The fee covers a defined minimum commitment:
- Attending in person the two collective workshops at MTG, 1–5 February and 19–23 April 2027.
- Attending the two online invited talks.
- Four short interviews of 15–30 minutes: before you start, after each workshop, and after the residency ends.
- Developing a work or outcome within your own practice. Any form counts: performance, composition, installation, tool, critique, a documented experiment. Unfinished or failed experiments are valid results.
- Including your work in the public presentation on 2 July 2027.
Beyond this minimum, we hope you'll stay in touch with the researchers between the workshops, while they develop the technical parts of the projects. If you want to go further still, the studios, the spatial setup and the researchers are there for you.
Fee and conditions
- The fee is €1,000 per project, gross. Duos and collectives share one fee.
- It covers the commitments listed under What we ask.
Taking part in the research
The residency is part of a research project at MTG on how artists and researchers work together. Taking part means:
- The four interviews are audio-recorded for research. They are not published.
- Some sessions may be recorded on audio and video for research purposes.
- Any recording used for public documentation needs your separate consent, which you can give or decline.
Being part of the study is part of the residency.
Applying
Who can apply
- Artists working with sound in any form: sound artists, musicians, composers, sound designers, media artists, conceptual artists and others.
- Individuals, duos or collectives.
- No technical background is required. Being comfortable with digital tools and open to experimentation helps.
- UPF staff and students are not eligible.
How to apply
Please send:
- A bio.
- A portfolio or links to your work.
- A statement of one to two pages. Tell us what you'd like to explore during the residency: the questions, interests or problems from your practice that you would bring, how you imagine working with researchers, and what you hope to get out of it. This isn't a project plan. We'll shape the project together.
- Confirmation that you can commit to the workshops, talks and interviews.
- Any accessibility needs.
- Anything else you'd like to tell us.
Shortlisted applicants will be invited to a short individual interview.